My No Reason
by CheetahLiv
Summary: JD was left outside the door to the Chief of Medicine’s office, his mentor’s blood coating his hands and soaking into his scrubs. SPOILERS FOR HOUSE S2 FINALE. Not a crossover, no slash. Oneshot. Please review!


AN: This is based on the season 2 finale episode of House, MD. It contains (minor) spoilers for that episode, so beware! Also, I know I haven't updated My Letters in ages, but that is because the summer is turning me into a lazy writer. Also, when I was moving out of my dorm a few months ago, I lost the outline I had for that story, but then just the other day I rediscovered it, so an update on Letters will be coming soon, I promise!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

:MY NO REASON:

JD glanced down at his pager, cursing softly under his breath. The little black box that controlled his life was currently beeping at him insistently, a fact which annoyed JD to no end, as he had just been about to sit down for lunch. Sighing, he unclipped the pager from his scrubs and read the message. GLADYS, MEET ME IN MY OFFICE PRONTO. BRING BARBIE AND GHANDI TOO. Of course, Dr. Cox would lord his new position as Chief of Medicine over his favorite ex-interns. JD ran his hands through his hair in exasperation, then stood and exited the cafeteria.

He made a quick stop at the nurses' station to see if Carla was around and knew where Elliot and Turk were. Fortunately, the three people he was looking for were all standing around, chatting together. Turk turned around as JD approached. "Hey V-Bear! I was just going to page you! You ready for lunch?"

JD sighed sadly. "Sorry C-Bear, but I just got paged by Dr. Cox. He wants you, me and Elliot to meet him in his office ASAP." Upon hearing her name, Elliot turned to face the two friends.

"Dr. Cox wants to see me? Oh no, what if he's going to yell at me? I mean, I haven't done anything wrong or anything that he could possibly be upset about, other than me going into private practice, which he should have gotten over a looong time ago, but we all know how Dr. Cox can be, holding on to grudges forever and ever until he can't remember anymore the reason why he was holding the grudge in the first place, but now he's the chief of medicine and oh frick I'm going to be fired!" Her face got progressively redder and her voice climbed several octaves during her freak-out session. JD, Turk and Carla, who were of course used to this kind of behavior, just rolled their eyes. JD was about to tease Elliot about how the only creatures who could have understood her high decibel rant were dogs and bats when his pager went off again.

DAMN IT GINGER, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? "Come on, you guys, Dr. Cox is pretty anxious for us to meet him," JD said, pulling Elliot by the arm as Turk leaned over to give Carla a kiss goodbye.

The three doctors made their way through the hospital to the third floor where Kelso's old office was. This floor was unusually quiet today; flu season had just ended, so there weren't too many patients in Sacred Heart. As a result, the third floor was almost deserted, and the wing that housed Dr. Cox's office was almost completely shut down. The sight of the big oak door that separated the corridor from the Chief of Medicine's office filled JD with a sense of foreboding. Even though he'd been an attending for several years, the thought of Dr. Cox reaming him out for something still made him as nervous as he had been as an intern. _Relax, JD,_ he told himself,_ it's probably nothing. Dr. Cox just wants to yell at us for some miniscule thing we've done wrong. He'll call me by a girl's name, Turk will be Ghandi or Turtlehead, and of course Elliot will be called Barbie a few times. But it'll be nothing of consequence, I'm sure._

The trio reached the door, and JD stepped forward, took a deep breath, and knocked. The door swung inward almost instantly, opened by Cox himself. And did he look pissed! "What the hell took you so long?" he growled, then ushered them inside his office without letting them answer. "I have a patient that I need your opinions on."

JD stopped short just inside the door, stunned, causing Elliot to run into him and stumble backwards. "Frick, JD!"

"Sorry, Elliot," JD mumbled under his breath. "I'm just shocked that Dr. Cox is honestly asking for our opinion on a patient. This has never happened before!"

"And it will never happen again, Glinda, so quit talking to Barbie and sit down!" Dr. Cox ranted, then sat himself down behind his desk. JD, Turk, and Elliot took seats across the desk from the older doctor, looking at each other apprehensively. After all, Dr. Cox was the self-proclaimed know-it-all, a true Dr. Diagnosis. For him to ask for their help meant that he finally was stumped by a tricky patient.

Dr. Cox took a deep breath, then began to list the patient's symptoms. "Patient is a Mr. Reading, presented with fever and severe swelling of the lips and tongue. No family history of any major conditions…well, at least as far as I can tell. It was kinda hard to understand this guy, on account of the swollen tongue and all. But man, was it ever hilarious to hear this guy talk!" He laughed at the memory, then stopped abruptly when he realized that no one else was laughing along with him. "Oh come on! His _tongue_ is swollen, how perfect an opportunity is that? Too perfect to pass up! Do you know what his favorite dessert topping is? _Whipped cweam_!" He burst out laughing again.

Turk rolled his eyes and stood. "Where are you going, Turtlehead?" Dr. Cox asked, stopping his laughing abruptly.

"You're an ass," Turk replied.

"I know," Dr. Cox countered. "Where are you going?" he repeated.

"You don't need our help. It's probably an infection, in which case you'd have started him on broad-spec antibiotics. And I'm a surgeon. You definitely didn't need a surgical consult for this case," Turk said. JD was surprised. He'd rarely seen his best friend stand up to Dr. Cox before, although he had heard about the few instances Turk had in detail.

JD was about to stand up to show solidarity with Turk when the door to the office opened. A balding man who appeared to be in his mid-forties stepped in and closed the door behind him. His blue eyes glittered dangerously, and in a raspy voice he asked, "Which one of you is Dr. Cox?"

Cox's head snapped around, and his eyes narrowed. "Tall blonde," he answered, jerking his head in Elliot's direction.

The man glanced at Elliot and frowned. "No, that's Dr. Reid." Cox glared at the man, a puzzled look forming on his face.

"I'm tall," he said. "How did you know who she was?" The man smiled slowly, and his grin made JD's skin creep. Something was wrong here…

"I'm an old patient of yours," the man replied.

This answer seemed to appease Dr. Cox. He turned his attention to Mr. Reading's chart on his desk and said casually, "Well, feel free to leave the flowers and the box of chocolates at the nurses' sta—"

His reply was cut off as the man lifted a pistol, aimed, and shot Cox right in the stomach. JD saw the whole scene in slow motion; the man raised the gun and slowly squeezed the trigger, the silvery bullet streaking through the air until it lodged firmly in the body of his mentor. Once he saw the blood pouring out of the wound, he was snapped back to real time.

Instinctively, JD stood, his chair falling backwards with a dull thud on the carpet. He moved to rush to the side of his mentor, but the shooter immediately turned the gun on him. "NO! Stay away from him!" he yelled frantically.

Desperate, JD glanced at his friends to see their reactions. Elliot's hands were clapped over her mouth, a shocked expression on her paler-than-usual face. Turk had his arms spread in front of her, in 

an attempt to shield her from the gunman. Both looked at a loss of what to do. Helpless, JD looked at Dr. Cox.

When the bullet had pierced his abdomen, Cox had staggered and then fallen against his desk, knocking papers and charts flying. His hands clutched his stomach, desperately trying to staunch the blood flowing freely between his fingers and dripping to the floor in a steadily expanding pool of scarlet. Blood and gunshot wounds JD could handle, but the one thing he wasn't prepared for was the look on his mentor's face.

JD had seen Dr. Cox in a myriad of moods, from boiling rage to blissfully happy to inconsolably depressed and basically every extreme in between. But never before had he seen this look on the older doctor's face. Pure fear was the only word to describe it. And that scared JD more than anything else.

JD turned his attention back to the gunman. He was gazing down at Dr. Cox with a satisfied smirk on his lips. "Shocking, isn't it?" he asked sarcastically. "Who'd want to hurt _you_?" Then he raised the gun one more time, aimed at Cox's head, and shot. This second bullet pierced his throat, and blood gushed everywhere, indicating an artery had been nicked or severed. The shooter seemed unfazed by the blood, and he simply turned on his heel and left.

JD was the first to reach the fallen Dr. Cox. He vaguely heard Elliot open the door and scream for help as he pressed on the wound in Cox's neck. Turk knelt at Cox's side and began applying pressure to the bullet wound in the abdomen. He could sense a large presence enter the room, and glanced over to see Janitor rolling a gurney into the office. It was the first time JD had ever been thankful for the presence of his nemesis. With Turk's help, JD lifted the pale, still form of Dr. Cox onto the gurney. Then JD stepped back to let Turk and Janitor wheel the gurney out of the room and down the hall where an emergency OR was being prepped, thanks to an intern who had heard Elliot's cry for help.

JD was left just outside the door to the Chief of Medicine's office, his mentor's blood coating his hands and soaking into his scrubs. He felt Elliot some up behind him, and he slowly wrapped an arm around her. Her normally pristine white lab coat was splattered with droplets of Cox's blood. She was shaking, and JD gathered her into a hug. She began sobbing into his shoulder, and he rubbed circles on her back, attempting to soothe her.

"He's gonna be okay, Elliot," he murmured in her ear over and over again, hoping that if he repeated it enough it would come true, even as his usual optimism failed him. Tears began to drip off the tip of his nose and fall silently on the tiled floor. "It's going to be alright," he kept whispering. But he wasn't sure if he believed it himself.

:Please review!:


End file.
